IIRC, when I was posted OCONUS, my BAH was matched to my rent through the housing office, so there was no way to pocket the leftovers. HI is OCONUS, but I'm not sure if it would be the same as a non-US post, have you confirmed which way it operates?

Service members in Alaska and Hawaii still receive BAH, even though it is OCONUS. In other locations like Europe or Asia, they receive Overseas Housing Allowance (OHA), which is only paid up to what is actually spent on rent. Therefore, this strategy would not work in those locations (although in parts of Europe I could get $10k a year in COLA).

Since the privatization of military housing in many locations, some on-post housing charges a flat rent that I pay with a check instead of collecting all BAH directly from my paycheck (my current post is an example). From the looks of it, most posts on Hawaii still collect BAH in it's entirety, which means I would have to live off post in order to pocket the leftovers.

@Bro

I haven't really. Although I'm currently working an office schedule, my job can be pretty demanding which would make it hard to maintain any sort of consistent part time work. Additionally, the only free time I really have for other work is on the weekend and maybe 7PM to 9PM on weekdays. That time on weekdays is my relaxation time and on weekends is when I socialize, go on dates, cook for the week, run errands, etc. Furthermore, I've only ever had one W2 job in my life that wasn't the Army and that was 7 years ago. I'm not so sure how to translate my skills into a part time job.

Some kind of freelance or virtual work might be possible, so I'll look into that. I've made money selling some of my possessions while de-cluttering, but that's not sustainable over the long run because my supply will eventually run out. That reminds me I have a few more things to list on Ebay.

Some of my hobbies could lead to income down the road, but right now I'm not at a level to make any money from them. I will definitely need to figure out how to diversify my income streams in the long term, which means I need to refine the skills that could make me money. Right now the focus is mostly on skills that reduce expenses (which makes me money). This gives me a lot more bang for my buck until I get expenses down to maybe $1000 a month. Then I will focus more on developing side income. For those that are already at that level expenses or lower, is that the method that you used?

I am a little concerned that the more time I spend in the military lifestyle, the more I will turn into a salary man.

Certainly there are multiple options for me to pursue graduate study, however all of them incur significant service obligations (usually 3x the length I'm in school). Additionally, at this point in time graduate school doesn't fit into my web of goals, so I probably won't pursue that option.

Over the past week I’ve really been thinking about what I want to do with my current career. I drew some timelines out with pen and paper which helped me to visualize things. Here is the current situation:

-I know I will be at my current position most likely until November 2020 (I might be able to shift that 6 months earlier, but I’m not sure at this time)
-After my current position, I will have to attend 6 months of training, which will incur a 12 month service obligation from when I finish the course
-This means, most likely the earliest I could leave AD is May 2022 (or November 2021 if I leave my current position 6 months earlier)

I don’t get full GI bill benefits until November 2022, which is part of my semi-retirement plan, so right now I am eyeing that date as my possible transition point. That is approximately 3.75 years away, although at this time I like my job enough that I’m not counting the days down.

Even though it’s only been a few months, living at a duty station that is located in an area with higher population density and more women has really improved my quality of life. Additionally, working a more regular schedule and having weekends off means I have time for life outside of work. Therefore, I believe living at a duty station that’s even closer to an urban center will bring me even more satisfaction.

As I alluded to in my last post, higher COL areas also provide a net pay raise thanks to housing allowance. After further research, I believe I am going to eliminate Hawaii and any other OCONUS location from possible locations because it would lock me in for a 3 year tour, which means I wouldn’t be able to leave AD until November 2023 at the earliest. I’d rather not lock myself in for longer service obligations if I can avoid it, since I’m 90% certain I won’t be doing the 20 year career path.

I’m currently exploring options in the greater DC metro area. I don’t know all of the options available but I have a coworker that’s senior to me and knows a good deal about what’s out there. Additionally, I have two coworkers that will be moving to units up in the DC area in the next 6 months, so hopefully I’ll able to leverage some connections if it gets to that point.

From the COL indexes I’ve looked at, the DC metro area is one of the most expensive in the country. However, my Craigslist and Google maps research reveal frugal options. The keys I’m finding are to live with roommates (duh), in an area that’s got a high population density but isn’t as expensive as DC proper (Baltimore, Arlington, Alexandria), in which I can commute by public transportation rather than car. The heavy traffic in the area means even a 10 mile car commute can take 45 minutes during rush hour (that’s a lot of money on gas and wear and tear). Also, the government will cover the cost for employees to use public transportation, which means my commuting costs could be free. I’m ok with up to an hour commute by public transportation because I can still use that time for reading/studying, whereas if I’m driving I have to be actively engaged. It might even be possible for me to get rid of my car, but for now I’d just plan on keeping it and only using it for weekend trips.

Ideal (Semi) Retirement

I ballpark at the time that I leave Active Duty in November ‘22, I will have around 300k in net worth. Of course some of this depends on the valuation of the stock market at that time as right now most of my net worth is in index funds. But 300k provides a good planning factor and really the exact number doesn’t matter much since I don’t plan on drawing from that pile more than ~5k to fund my first year of retirement. My NW is not sufficient for a lifetime at 2x JAFI expenses, but provides a cushion for my semi-retirement. Additionally, it gives me capital to possibly invest in rental properties or go with a house hacking strategy to lower expenses.

Right now, my 3 year plan starting in November 2022 is as follows:

Year 1:
NG/Reserves ($12-19k income per year)
Practice guitar to get into Masters program for Jazz
Research/learn about RE investing in area

Year 2:
NG/Reserves ($12-19k income per year)
Music School (GI Bill covers tuition and provides $19k a year for living expenses)
Purchase property?

Year 3:
NG/Reserves ($12-19k income per year)
Music School (GI Bill covers tuition and provides $19k a year for living expenses)
RE Income ($??)

With this plan, the only time I would potentially have to draw down from savings is the first year if my NG income does not quite cover my expenses. Once I am in school, I have the option to stop military service and just live off the generous GI Bill housing allowance, or still do both and maintain a 50% savings rate. Rental properties or house hacking could also provide cash flow.

I actually have 36 months of GI Bill benefits, which is enough for 4 years full time (no summers) in grad school. So I could try to find a program that I can stretch into 4 years of schooling and have my tuition covered and 19k as a living stipend (without having to TA) for that entire time, but I think I’d rather keep the last 18 months of benefits in my back pocket in case I decide to do another career change/return to academia later in life.

Good plan, only thing I wonder is the hourly rates you can get after music school? Are you planning to part time give music lessons or something? What's your end game in 20 years or whatever? I only ask to see if they all line up, if you'd need to retrain again later to ramp up income down the line for some bigger ambition, then you may want to do that first?

Being a semiRE musician sounds very fulfilling provided that you can get enough money for later in life plans.

ERE gives me the option to reach financial independence long before working for 20 years to get a pension. I have some other interests that I’d like to really explore full-time (music is one) which I don’t think I will be able to do while having an active duty job. In my line of work, 20 years is a very long time and takes a serious toll on the mind and the body. I’ve seen enough physically and mentally broken service members just grinding their way through the last 5-10 years of their career that I don’t want to ever be in that position. Doug Nordman provides some good insight into this and even though he stuck it out for a 20 year career, he thinks leaving active duty before the 20 year mark and joining the reserves would have saved him a lot of stress. On the other hand, I do still enjoy my job and at the moment I’m really just taking things one assignment at a time.

@Augustus

Great questions.

I don’t really have an end game that I’ve thought through 20 years out. I have a hard time looking that far out because my desires change so often that I think trying to project forward specifics is a waste of time. However, I would like to be financially independent at some point, just because it provides me with some freedom and flexibility. Certainly my expenses could increase in the future, but I also believe that at some point I will return to full-time work between the age of 28 and my death. I’m not sure if you’re hinting at that maybe my expenses will increase because I’ll have a family one day. That is possible, however I don’t anticipate choosing a spendthrift partner and I’m not even sure that I want children.

My goal in my (semi) retirement is to not have to draw down any of my savings (principal or returns) for as long as possible. I will cover my expenses through streams of income while my net worth continues to grow from compound interest. I’ll admit that I haven’t yet run the numbers on what age I would reach financial independence if I never contribute another dollar to my net worth after a leave Active Duty.

I’m not sure if the typical cost/benefit analysis of a graduate degree is applicable here. The GI Bill will pay me 36 months of benefits, however if I don’t get a degree then I have no way to get that money (tuition and fees covered up to $24k a year and another ~$19k for living expenses). In other words, I will be getting paid to go to school, without having to do any of the slave labor associated with typical graduate stipends.

Before going into wages, I’ll go into my reasons for wanting to get a graduate degree in music. A music degree will tie me into the local community of musicians and improve my musicianship through focused study faster than I would be able to do on my own. The degree itself doesn’t matter that much, but the connections it provides me with is what I think will be one of the biggest factors to being able to find gigs as a musician. To clarify, the university I’d be studying at is in the same city where all of my friends and family live now, so it fits well into my web of goals.

I’m not so sure on hourly wages of a musician, however here are the options I’ve examined for making money from music:

Teaching Guitar (real hourly wage $30-50)
That wage range comes from having my own guitar teaching business rather than working for a school. Going rate in my city for lessons is $60 an hour if they travel to me or $75 an hour if I travel to them. Obviously, that would take work to develop a website and hunt for students, however I might be able to leverage a blog/personal website to teach skype lessons for $50-60 an hour. I would note that best case we’re talking about teaching 4 hours of lessons a week unless I want to spend all my time teaching rather than playing. That real hourly wage factors in travel time/expenses, prepping lessons, finding students, etc. But even with 16 hours of lessons a month, that could potentially provide me with $1000 of net income a month.

Cruise Ship Musician ($3k a month)
Pub guitarists/singers can make ~$3k a month working cruise ships which usually have contracts of 3-6 months. I would live on the cruise ship for that time, so all food expenses would be covered. I could see myself working 3-6 months a year on cruiseships and spending the rest of the time stateside until I get tired of that lifestyle.

Local Gigs ($??)
I really have no idea what the average wage for local gigs pay. Pay varies a lot depending on the gig, however I know of musicians that make a living just playing in cover bands or wedding bands. I suspect making money from original music is a bit more difficult.

Website/Blog/Youtube/Patreon ($??)
There are ways to make money as a musician online depending on what platforms that I want to try to monetize. My primary focus for this will be to do things I enjoy doing, rather than just trying to monetize things, so I don’t have this high on the list.

I suspect the ERE lifestyle will help me immensely when it comes to navigating the musician lifestyle. I’ll have low expenses and multiple streams of income, so I am not desperate for gigs and I don’t need to have an energy/time draining full-time job to support myself. I’ll also have a wide social network from all of my renaissance man interests and activities.

As I mentioned in earlier posts, other streams of income would be rental real estate and National Guard. My SHTF fulltime fallback option is to find a government or contracting job in IT, which with my experience should be possible even if I’ve been out of the job market for a few years. Drilling in the Guard would also help to keep my experience fresh and make me look more “employable.”

I enjoy listening to and playing jazz, however I would say that the genres of music that speak to my soul most are probably more in the rock/blues/funk realms. I do really like gypsy jazz because I feel like it is a sub-genre in which the guitar has some of the raw energy that you also have with rock or blues. In terms of guitarists, I like John Scofield and Django Reinhardt. There are others, but I haven't been listening to a lot of jazz guitar music recently.

I see jazz as a great framework to really challenge and expand my musicianship, which will then carry over into other genres.

First off, I hit a big milestone recently. I now have over $150k in net worth! It gave me a small thrill seeing that number, however at the end of the day it’s just a number on a screen. Although money does give me freedom and options, numbers on a screen don’t provide me with lasting fulfillment or self-actualization. Life goes on.

Scenarios

Assumptions
18k annual expenses (The numbers get a lot more favorable if I can lower my expenses, however I am using this conservative figure because it reflects my current expenses)

This is the traditional FIRE situation in which I stay in the Army until I have enough money to have a 3% SWR for the rest of my life. I think I would have to stay in the Army around 10 years to reach that point, depending on market performance. I could then leave the Army and never have to work again, which I’m sure would be a great feeling. However, I don’t think I’ll end up sitting around for the next 50+ years of my life without earning another dollar. Additionally, this strategy isn’t very ERE because I’m accumulating all of my money by maximizing income from one specialized job and minimizing expenses. It’s more difficult to develop multiple streams of income and diverse ERE skills when I’m focused on working one full-time job.

Semi-Retirement/Crawling to FI (ERE)
NW at start of Semi-Retirement: 300k

Another option that I mentioned earlier in my journal is for me to leave the Army in 2022 with $300k NW (50% of FI). Fish’s post in the Coasting to FI thread helped to lay out the math behind this strategy. The data that pertains most to me is this (assumes 4% investment returns):

In other words, if I leave the Army in 2022 and only work enough to cover my expenses in semi-retirement, it will take me 23.4 years to reach FI (2045). Compared to the traditional FIRE option, I’m getting semi-freedom 3 years earlier but will have to work to cover all my expenses for 23 more years. From a strictly numbers perspective, it of course makes sense to just stick out full-time employment for 3 more years and be set for life.

However, I really don’t care all that much about hitting my “number.” I think traditional FIRE is overrated and many of those who just focus on the number end up deeply unfulfilled in retirement until they develop other hobbies and streams of income. If I know I’m going to do that in retirement even with traditional FIRE, I might as well just do it sooner. Additionally, Jacob has pointed out in other threads that having more money than he ever could need has actually demotivated him from pursuing some opportunities that could have improved his life.

I think worst case for me is a 30% savings rate in semi-retirement, which would require a post-tax income of $25.7k a year. That would give me a FI date of 2036, not that the FI date really matters. I am certain some years I would surpass it and maybe some years I wouldn’t quite make the 30% savings rate. I think I’ll aspire to a 50% savings rate, but 30% is much more realistic.

Like everything related to FIRE, things get a lot easier if I can lower my expenses or if I use a less conservative SWR. My focus right now is on lowering expenses rather than developing other streams of income, but I wanted to run the numbers on a worst-case scenario.

Spending was quite low this month, although part of that is because I traveled a week for work and February is shorter than other months.

Business Trip
I’m not sure the best way to account for my expenses while on a business trip, since all my non-food expenses are covered and I get per diem each day. For my 5-day trip I received $248.50 in per diem and I ended up spending $102.66 on food, which left me with a $145.84 profit. I guess in the future I could still count the food expenses while traveling in order to motivate me to figure out how to lower them. This was my first business trip with my unit and nearly every meal was a social/business meal with a group of people, which means lowering food expenses might not really be possible. I think I only had one beer the whole trip, in part because it was during the workweek.

I’d be curious to see how other people account for per diem business expenses. Even if I don’t account for them in expenses, my monthly food spending will be artificially lower since I don’t have to spend money on food during the time I’m traveling. On the other hand, I wouldn’t be spending money eating out at restaurants if I wasn’t traveling.

A big expense that I didn’t include this month is $800 for federal taxes. I will get a $1500 refund for state taxes this year, so I see the whole tax situation as a wash. Again, another accounting choice to keep things simple, although technically I could count the tax bill as an expense (amortized over the entire year) and the refund as income. I will get that refund every year from state taxes because I can’t get them to stop deducting it from my paycheck.

I have another month-long trip coming up, so expenses should be pretty low for March and April.

Travel Credit Cards
Chase and American Express wave all annual fees for active duty military personnel. In the past week I’ve upgraded to 2 cards that give me $300 reimbursement for travel expenses and $200 reimbursement for airfare expenses respectively. Other benefits include $200 a year towards Uber and a free hotel night annually. In combination with my points from work trips, this should allow me to travel several times a year without having to increase my expenses at all. In other words, I can increase my quality of life by visiting friends and family more often without having to increase my spending.

Revisiting Earlier Journal Posts
I re-read my first few entries in this journal and I think my expenses at that time were closer to 2.5k a month rather than the 1k that I estimated. When I started this journal, I wasn’t tracking every expense and it seems like I spent a lot of money on eating out. I don’t think I’ve ever had expenses this low, which is mostly because I got my rent down to $350 a month and I’ve made a deliberate effort over the past couple of months to cook more. Also living in a place that has a higher population density means that I don’t have to drive hours and stay in hotels/Airbnbs on weekends.

I just returned from my whirlwind month-long work trip. I'm still tabulating expenses and income for March and April, so I'll probably include those in a complete financial update at the end of the month.

The trip was my first to the West Coast and I really enjoyed it. I spent a week in San Diego and now I see the appeal of Southern California. It was one of the nicest cities I've ever been and I think it would be a very good retirement spot. I'll go into details in a moment. I also spend some time in Washington, which was also nice but I wasn't as big of a fan of the weather and culture compared to SoCal. I'm glad to be back sleeping in my own bed and be able to cook my own meals. I grew tired of living in hotels and eating meals out.

Before going to California, I assumed the state was car congested, overpriced, overtaxed, and overrated dystopia. Although there are probably parts of CA that fit that criteria, I found San Diego really appealing for me. I enjoyed the sunny weather which encourages people to spend more time outside and makes activities enjoyable year round. Cycling is very popular (Bronze Bicycle Friendly Community). I liked the easy access to beaches and was shocked how dense the city is (downtown to the beach is a 15-20 min car ride or 30 min bus ride). Traffic is bad at rush hour, but that's true of every city I've seen and honestly the Seattle traffic was worse than what I saw in San Diego. The public parks and beaches are beautiful and I was thrilled to see the number of people just hanging out on the beach with their friends on a Friday night, sitting around a fire, grilling, enjoying the sunset, and having a good time all free of charge.

And my god the girls. Going from my base in the small town south to San Diego was like going from a desert to tropical rain forest. It's a great mating market for what I'm looking for at the moment. I thought the girls I would come across might be stuck up or money-focused, but really I found many to be physically active, laidback, and down to earth. It's not LA.

There are of course downsides to the city, but I think a lot of those could be mitigated in a semi or full-retirement. Housing cost is high, although pretty comparable to major cities outside of the south. I think it's Ego who lives in SD and has some kind of property management situation, so undoubtedly there are ways to mitigate the high housing cost. It's my understanding that CA offers a lot of public services, which is helpful to an individual with low expenses and low income, and high taxes are not as big of an issue if I'm out of my major accumulation phase. Additionally, as Jacob and others have said about California, there is plenty of opportunity to live off the waste/excess of others through scavenging, etc. A car is not necessary if one chooses housing wisely and public transportation seems decent.

For me the biggest downside is the distance from friends and family on the east coast. I don't know that I'd permanently move there, but I could see maybe living there seasonally a few months out of the year.

Maybe I have an overly positive view of San Diego, but I'd love to get any opinions of people that are familiar with the city.

Half of March and April were spent traveling for work. Pretty cushy for the first 3 weeks staying in hotels with full per diem and the last 2 weeks were spent in more austere conditions with no per diem. I wasn’t really focused on saving money and spent a lot on bars and restaurants in the first 3 weeks. I debated how to tally up expenses for accounting purposes and ultimately settled on only counting the money I spent that went over my per diem, and then still counting my typical recurring expenses. So that’s why the numbers may look a little wonky.

May was all spent at home, so that month reflects my typical expense level pretty accurately.

June was another irregular month because I took vacation and deployed. The extra income is from bonuses and tax-free pay, most of the extra expenses are from traveling. I’d been planning this trip for a while and got a lot of value out of it, so I’d say it was worth the expense for me. I think I could optimize and maybe have shaved 20% off of that cost and still had similar levels of enjoyment. I probably won’t do another trip like this until next summer, which is fine because I used up a lot of travel rewards to stay in nice hotels and fly.

Reviewing the past few months of expenses revealed a few things to me. For one, it looks like my spending hovers right around a $1500 a month average, which I’m pretty happy about. That puts me at 18k annual spend, which means I’m at 10x annual spending saved at the moment. A nice milestone, but I’ve also been helped by the record bull market.

I knew spending would be high on restaurants and bars, since I spent so much time traveling and socializing. I didn’t realize I spend so much on dating. During the previous 4 months I spent $677 on dates (food, alcohol, travel, activities) and $718 on dating apps. It looks like I’m spending way too much on dating apps, but I find that I need to pay for some premium services to have success in my unfavorable dating markets. Additionally, when traveling I use dating apps to meet new people. I just cut premium services for one dating app, so now I just stick with the app that I have the most success on. As I’ve written before, I really would like to live somewhere with a more favorable mating market, but I don’t know if that will be possible while I’m on active duty. Even so, I don’t think I have a reason to spend more than $75 a month so I will focus on that in the upcoming months.

Semi-Retirement
I recently discovered ADOS (Active Duty for Operational Support). Basically this allows me to pick up short term contracts in the reserves/Guard anywhere from a few weeks up to an entire year. This is exactly the kind of flexibility I’m looking for in semi-retirement. I can choose the location and duty position, giving me the control that I have been missing on active duty. And I can still maintain my status in a normal drilling unit so I can compete for promotion and get cheap healthcare.

For example, let’s say I pick up a 3 month contract. Looking at listings, I see there are open positions in Miami, San Antonio, and the DC Metro area (all great locations that I would enjoy living in for a few months). I’d make $8358 a month, along with partial per diem and all hotel expenses paid. I work normal hours/days with weekends off. This is significantly more money than what I would make drilling because I’m getting paid BAH for my home of record, which in this case is the large city I’m living in for my semi-retirement. In other words, I could cover my annual expenses and then some by working only 3 months a year. It also provides me a scalable option if I want to increase or decrease income.

My second stream of income could come from rental real estate. When I get back home, I’m going to start really digging into my local real estate market. I’m not sure if it’s viable for rental real estate at the moment, but I want to learn more about the field. I have a few books on the subject that I’ll read again and I’m going to start going to a local meetup. Right now, I have about 25k sitting in cash and I’d like to get to 50k to potentially deploy on a down payment. Obviously it will all depend on the market, but I’d like to have the option since I think rental real estate fits into my web of goals.

The third leg in my tripod would be income from music. Obviously not very reliable, so maybe I should also plan for working part-time in something related to cybersecurity.

I recently discovered ADOS (Active Duty for Operational Support). Basically this allows me to pick up short term contracts in the reserves/Guard anywhere from a few weeks up to an entire year. This is exactly the kind of flexibility I’m looking for in semi-retirement. I can choose the location and duty position, giving me the control that I have been missing on active duty. And I can still maintain my status in a normal drilling unit so I can compete for promotion and get cheap healthcare.

For example, let’s say I pick up a 3 month contract. Looking at listings, I see there are open positions in Miami, San Antonio, and the DC Metro area (all great locations that I would enjoy living in for a few months). I’d make $8358 a month, along with partial per diem and all hotel expenses paid. I work normal hours/days with weekends off. This is significantly more money than what I would make drilling because I’m getting paid BAH for my home of record, which in this case is the large city I’m living in for my semi-retirement. In other words, I could cover my annual expenses and then some by working only 3 months a year. It also provides me a scalable option if I want to increase or decrease income.

Good find! I am looking at the Army R/NG, and my dad (who was Navy reserves) was telling me about their system that sounds nearly identical to ADOS; I was wondering if there was an Army equivalent. This sounds perfect for me too, gonna talk to the recruiter about it. Thanks.

Dude, at about $1400 a month you could be mating twice a day guaranteed in my neck of the woods, a different person each time, no app needed and no bullshit involved. I have no idea what you doing with that much and what you actually mean by "mating market" really. If you want to one night stands, just go to the adequate markets. If you want a long term relationship, you should not be spending money on that.

From my research it looks like ADOS provides really great flexibility. You can do it while part of a TPU (normal drilling reserve/guard unit), DIMA (basically you do all of your drilling and AT at once over a ~6 week period), or as part of the IRR. The only downside with the IRR route is you're not eligible for Tricare Reserve Select, which is comprehensive low deductible healthcare for $43 a month, upside is that you are very unlikely to deploy in the IRR. You will accumulate retirement points and even GI Bill benefits if you don't already have them. As long as your tour is less than 365 days, you will get paid BAH based on where you live (if you live in a metro area that will probably be more than your ADOS location).

If you have a CAC or know someone that does, you can check out all the job listings on this website: https://mobcop.army.mil/. If your MOS doesn't have any jobs, there are still tons of MOS immaterial jobs available.

@bigato

If I recall correctly from your other posts, you live in South America? If that's the case then I totally agree that is a typical experience for an American male in many areas of the world (I experienced this in Taiwan). Although I may live abroad in the future, right now I'd rather be closer to friends and family in the US.

Think of a mating market like an economic market for dating (made up of single males and single females). The supply and demand is greatly influenced by gender ratio, but also other factors. Mating markets can be as large as a city, or as small as a bar on a typical Saturday night or a church group on a Sunday afternoon. The idea is you'll have a lot more success if you're in a favorable market for what you're looking for. For example, if you are a Mormon man looking for wife, then rural Utah is probably a pretty good place to be. If you are a non-religious man looking for casual sex, rural Utah might not be the best place.

I'm mostly interested in college educated women in their 20's. These women tend to congregate in major cities since that's where the jobs and opportunities exist. As a rule, Army bases are located in the American south and at best 1-2 hours from a major metropolitan area. Additionally, since the military is predominantly male, the mating market around an Army base is extremely unfavorable for single men. There's just too much competition and not enough women. At the moment I'm mostly interested in short term relationships, although I'm not opposed to a longer term relationship. However, I'm not really interested in doing a long distance thing and it's hard to develop a long term serious relationship when I'm away from home so much (In the 9 months I've been on the job, I've been away for ~3 months).

Here's how I explained the situation in another thread:

The single male/single female gender ratio around a military base is probably close to 90/10 (maybe gets down to 70/30 in the town outside of base if there is a university and/or other industry). Around a base I usually can only attract a 6 or 7 on my arbitrary 10 point scale of mate value. If I travel to a large city, I can usually get an 8 or 9, or at least get a 7 with much less effort. I know that nothing about me is changing over a weekend in another city, rather my mate value is a lot higher because the mating market is a lot more favorable for me.

That $1400 on dating was over 4 months, not monthly. I'll dig a little more into those expenses though for clarification. If I go on a date with a girl, I include the entire price of the date to include my food/drinks and my transportation. It might be 2019, but in my experience 90% of girls still expect a guy to pay for a first date. I spent $200 to pay for a friend to fly and visit me, which I thought would be worth it but won't be something I do again in the future. I exclusively use swiping dating apps, and most of that spending was when I arrive in a new area and pay to get moved to the top of the stack to get more matches which lead to dates. But I agree with your sentiment, I am spending a lot on this.

Really the tradeoff I've had to make thus far is between a job a really like doing or living in location that I enjoy. The job I'm currently in is extremely rewarding and provides benefits not available elsewhere in the Army, so I will likely stay here until Spring 2020. From there I will have to make the decision of whether to pursue a very rewarding job in a bad location or pursue a less rewarding job in a better location. The wrench in this whole thing is the active duty Army assignment process, which means I could end up with a less rewarding job in a bad location. Perhaps I will leave active duty, I'm not sure yet. I'm researching my options in the coming months.

Ok, sounds terrible. Thanks for the patience on explaining it and sorry for being so harsh. I'd probably go full celibatory in that situation or just go to the places where you outright pay for sex (and probably save money that way).